Thursday, September 08, 2005
Hi Mom!
My mother has been reading this blog. Hi Mom. So, I guess that means now I can only put stuff in it that's Mom-proofed. I suppose I could tell her she reads it at her own sole risk, and let it all fly. But I guess I'll do what I always do-- strive for balance, while keeping all the variables and considerations in mind.
My father arrived in Los Angeles via Amtrak today. He did another 50 or so miles of biking and picked up over 100 miles of rides with assorted colorful Louisiana characters to get to a town in Texas where the trains were actually running. And then of course he met a few more characters on the train. He has plentiful stories to tell. He brought me up to date upon his return, and I encouraged him to get it all written down. He said he'd already started his travelogue while he was on the train, despite the often bumpy ride. So I expect I'll be providing a link to that prose one of these days.
My cellphone voicemail box filled today, and wasn't taking any more messages. I kinda love when that happens.
I am always backlogged with emails, answering machine messages, postal mail, cell phone voicemail, appointments, and customers and suppliers and friends and employees wondering why I can't make more time for them. Meanwhile, although I can be social and communicative, I remain a somewhat introverted person. I just can't do all that. That's one reason I hired my Chief Operations guy, Joe, and made sure to choose someone for that position who had a more extraverted temperament, as well as being more of a scheduler/organizer/administrator by nature.
Anyway, when my voicemail box is full, it sort of says "Enough." Whatever it is, it can wait. You don't need Joel's attention that badly.
It never lasts for more than a day. But I take a certain contrary pleasure in knowing that, one time out of twenty when people call my cell phone, pulling my electronic chain, maybe they just don't have the option of leaving me a message. Take another path. Talk to someone else. Work it out. Find peace with yourself. Do without my attention, instead of taking it for granted.
It's true, I do like to be supportive, to be a good listener, and to be a good leader when I can. But I don't want the world to depend on me too much. I need my freedom of motion. I need to isolate sometimes. And all of us need to branch out, to cultivate many outlets and sources for the good things in life.
I have been feeling the call strongly in the past week... the call of the world... particularly the part of it that is not the United States. I am liable to disappear for a while one of these days soon, without much notice or advance planning. I may even blow some appointments or leave a few loose ends untied. No great harm will be done. Friends, family, my company... you can all deal with it. I'm not much good to any of you anyway if I can't maintain my sanity and spiritual condition.
It helps to get away. Los Angeles is a challenge. Watching the USA creak and groan under the weight of its own fear, bureaucracy, hypocrisy, aggression, and hubris is a challenge. The multidimensional realities of running an alternative, technology-dependent company with a particularly-diverse staff of 35 employees are a challenge. Crises, real estate, renovations, cash flow issues, a rich catalog of friends with problems of their own... and then there's the challenge of trying to keep a creative life going on the side. No one should begrudge me the occasional disappearance.
Am I whining? Am I wallowing in self-pity? I hope not. I signed up for this life I'm leading. Nobody forced it upon me at gunpoint. I took all this on, driven by whatever creative fires, ambitions and/or demons I carry within. I seem to be expressing some need to live a little larger. Maybe in the end it just leads to learning a lesson about downsizing and simplifying, but this is my path today.
I won't begrudge myself a break, a respite... whether it's in the form of exercising my fundamental human right to split town, or something smaller like letting the voicemail box fill up.
Come to think of it, maybe I could just turn the voicemail off. Can't get me? Call my assistant, Amy. Tell her about it. She'll tell me whatever I need to know.
Amy is the best. She's been with me just almost a year now. Finding her was a stroke of luck, long-awaited and none too soon.
Amy says LUCK = "Living Under Correct Knowlege." She's inspiringly spiritual, and her idealistic outlook is always correct in essence, even when may seem sometimes impractical or unpragmatic. Living in accord with the highest ideals is not always the easiest/shortest path, but it does generally pay the highest dividends.
Last night, my producer friend Kevin came by with a songwriter/arranger friend of his, Larry John McNally. Larry wrote one of my favorite songs, "Nobody's Girl," which was beautifully recorded by Bonnie Raitt. They listened to about 8 of my songs, and we made some reference recordings. After over a decade of working quietly under the radar and mostly alone on my musical compositions, the time has come to take them out for a spin around the block. My next career-- the performing arts one-- is in the very beginning of its more public phase. It has been a long time coming, and I have deflected many comments and questions from friends over the years who wondered why I wasn't "doing something" with my music. But I was.
This is how I operate sometimes. I work quietly on something, and it may be somewhat opaque or puzzling to many people around me for a long time. But eventually it's ready for the light of day, and then it explains itself.
My company was like that. There were a couple of years in the early 90s when I was running my embryonic online sex toy company from the family farmhouse in southern Illinois. That was a very, very strange thing to be doing. Most people had never heard of the internet at that time, and didn't understand what it was or what it meant on those rare occasions when I bothered to try to explain it. As for doing business on the internet, that was a sort of underground concept that was sort of in a gray area with respect to its legality. Internet access was not so easy to come by then, and my internet access was a long-distance call on a 2400-baud modem to my former college in Los Angeles. Since there was only one long-distance company serving that area at the time (good old AT&T), the rates were not competitive and those calls cost 25 cents/minute. Meanwhile, kink was more taboo, much less mainstream then than now. Especially in rural southern Illinois, all this was so out of place that I might as well have been from Neptune. Finally, the business was still quite small, and not really making much money-- and the money was the only reason that most people can fathom for being in such a business in the first place.
But now, in 2005, it isn't the family farmhouse anymore, it's a 30,000-square foot warehouse on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. And it explains itself. Everybody knows what "e-commerce" is, and nobody questions it as THE new way to do business. Being in the commercial end of sex and kink is less racy and generally regarded as more legitimate these days. We have lawyers, accountants, contractors, programmers, agents, tenants, and dozens of vendors. We work with the best models, photographers, printers, designers, etc. We have 35 talented people on staff, and I take it for granted that, when we post a listing for a new hire, we will get an pile of applications from intelligent, responsible adults with college degrees and impressive resumes, and they will be excited to work in a place that's just a little alternative... but obviously not too much. And it makes some money too. Cool.
Barring unforeseen detours, I feel reasonably hopeful that my performing-arts work will follow a similar pattern. After pursuing it as a quiet, underground, odd project for many years now, it's ready to be brought forth in a more accessible and polished form, and it will speak for itself.
My father arrived in Los Angeles via Amtrak today. He did another 50 or so miles of biking and picked up over 100 miles of rides with assorted colorful Louisiana characters to get to a town in Texas where the trains were actually running. And then of course he met a few more characters on the train. He has plentiful stories to tell. He brought me up to date upon his return, and I encouraged him to get it all written down. He said he'd already started his travelogue while he was on the train, despite the often bumpy ride. So I expect I'll be providing a link to that prose one of these days.
My cellphone voicemail box filled today, and wasn't taking any more messages. I kinda love when that happens.
I am always backlogged with emails, answering machine messages, postal mail, cell phone voicemail, appointments, and customers and suppliers and friends and employees wondering why I can't make more time for them. Meanwhile, although I can be social and communicative, I remain a somewhat introverted person. I just can't do all that. That's one reason I hired my Chief Operations guy, Joe, and made sure to choose someone for that position who had a more extraverted temperament, as well as being more of a scheduler/organizer/administrator by nature.
Anyway, when my voicemail box is full, it sort of says "Enough." Whatever it is, it can wait. You don't need Joel's attention that badly.
It never lasts for more than a day. But I take a certain contrary pleasure in knowing that, one time out of twenty when people call my cell phone, pulling my electronic chain, maybe they just don't have the option of leaving me a message. Take another path. Talk to someone else. Work it out. Find peace with yourself. Do without my attention, instead of taking it for granted.
It's true, I do like to be supportive, to be a good listener, and to be a good leader when I can. But I don't want the world to depend on me too much. I need my freedom of motion. I need to isolate sometimes. And all of us need to branch out, to cultivate many outlets and sources for the good things in life.
I have been feeling the call strongly in the past week... the call of the world... particularly the part of it that is not the United States. I am liable to disappear for a while one of these days soon, without much notice or advance planning. I may even blow some appointments or leave a few loose ends untied. No great harm will be done. Friends, family, my company... you can all deal with it. I'm not much good to any of you anyway if I can't maintain my sanity and spiritual condition.
It helps to get away. Los Angeles is a challenge. Watching the USA creak and groan under the weight of its own fear, bureaucracy, hypocrisy, aggression, and hubris is a challenge. The multidimensional realities of running an alternative, technology-dependent company with a particularly-diverse staff of 35 employees are a challenge. Crises, real estate, renovations, cash flow issues, a rich catalog of friends with problems of their own... and then there's the challenge of trying to keep a creative life going on the side. No one should begrudge me the occasional disappearance.
Am I whining? Am I wallowing in self-pity? I hope not. I signed up for this life I'm leading. Nobody forced it upon me at gunpoint. I took all this on, driven by whatever creative fires, ambitions and/or demons I carry within. I seem to be expressing some need to live a little larger. Maybe in the end it just leads to learning a lesson about downsizing and simplifying, but this is my path today.
I won't begrudge myself a break, a respite... whether it's in the form of exercising my fundamental human right to split town, or something smaller like letting the voicemail box fill up.
Come to think of it, maybe I could just turn the voicemail off. Can't get me? Call my assistant, Amy. Tell her about it. She'll tell me whatever I need to know.
Amy is the best. She's been with me just almost a year now. Finding her was a stroke of luck, long-awaited and none too soon.
Amy says LUCK = "Living Under Correct Knowlege." She's inspiringly spiritual, and her idealistic outlook is always correct in essence, even when may seem sometimes impractical or unpragmatic. Living in accord with the highest ideals is not always the easiest/shortest path, but it does generally pay the highest dividends.
Last night, my producer friend Kevin came by with a songwriter/arranger friend of his, Larry John McNally. Larry wrote one of my favorite songs, "Nobody's Girl," which was beautifully recorded by Bonnie Raitt. They listened to about 8 of my songs, and we made some reference recordings. After over a decade of working quietly under the radar and mostly alone on my musical compositions, the time has come to take them out for a spin around the block. My next career-- the performing arts one-- is in the very beginning of its more public phase. It has been a long time coming, and I have deflected many comments and questions from friends over the years who wondered why I wasn't "doing something" with my music. But I was.
This is how I operate sometimes. I work quietly on something, and it may be somewhat opaque or puzzling to many people around me for a long time. But eventually it's ready for the light of day, and then it explains itself.
My company was like that. There were a couple of years in the early 90s when I was running my embryonic online sex toy company from the family farmhouse in southern Illinois. That was a very, very strange thing to be doing. Most people had never heard of the internet at that time, and didn't understand what it was or what it meant on those rare occasions when I bothered to try to explain it. As for doing business on the internet, that was a sort of underground concept that was sort of in a gray area with respect to its legality. Internet access was not so easy to come by then, and my internet access was a long-distance call on a 2400-baud modem to my former college in Los Angeles. Since there was only one long-distance company serving that area at the time (good old AT&T), the rates were not competitive and those calls cost 25 cents/minute. Meanwhile, kink was more taboo, much less mainstream then than now. Especially in rural southern Illinois, all this was so out of place that I might as well have been from Neptune. Finally, the business was still quite small, and not really making much money-- and the money was the only reason that most people can fathom for being in such a business in the first place.
But now, in 2005, it isn't the family farmhouse anymore, it's a 30,000-square foot warehouse on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. And it explains itself. Everybody knows what "e-commerce" is, and nobody questions it as THE new way to do business. Being in the commercial end of sex and kink is less racy and generally regarded as more legitimate these days. We have lawyers, accountants, contractors, programmers, agents, tenants, and dozens of vendors. We work with the best models, photographers, printers, designers, etc. We have 35 talented people on staff, and I take it for granted that, when we post a listing for a new hire, we will get an pile of applications from intelligent, responsible adults with college degrees and impressive resumes, and they will be excited to work in a place that's just a little alternative... but obviously not too much. And it makes some money too. Cool.
Barring unforeseen detours, I feel reasonably hopeful that my performing-arts work will follow a similar pattern. After pursuing it as a quiet, underground, odd project for many years now, it's ready to be brought forth in a more accessible and polished form, and it will speak for itself.
